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THE 



AMERICAN UNION: 



A DISCOURSE 



DELIVERED 



On Thursday, December 12, 1850, 



THE DAY OF THE ANNUAL THANKSGIVING IN PENNSYLVANIA. 



AND REPEATED ON THURSDAY, DECEMBEB 19, 



IN THE TENTH PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH, PHILADELPHIA, 



HEXliY A. BOARDMAX. D.D. 



SEVENTH EDITION. 



P I! I I, A D E L P IMA: 

J. B. LIPPINCO T T & C (>. 

1 860. 



,3 



23 
US - 



Entered, according to the Act of Congress, in the year L851, by 

I. I I'l'I SCOTT, (I 11. \ M BO 4 C i).. 

In the Clerk's Offi Disl b I stern District of Pennsylvania. 



5HBRM W & SON, Pri 
S W. Cornel Seventh nnd Cherry Streets, P 



PREFATORY NOTE. 



This sermon haa long been out of print. Frequent applications have 
been made for it, which could not be supplied. 1 deeply regret that anj 
occasion should have arisen for republishing it. But it is the proper com- 
plement of my sermon on Thanksgiving Day; and the argument of that 
discourse is very incomplete without this. 

On referring to this pamphlet, after a long interval, I find it pervaded 
with a very different tone from that of the recent sermon, in respect to the 
triumphs and influence of Christianity in our country. I have only I 
on this point, that within the last ten years, there has been a rapid develop- 
ment amongst us of an acrimonious theology, which has poisoned our 
politics, and tilled the country with hatred instead (if love. This maj ex 
plain many things of much greater moment than the dissimilarity bi 
these two discourses. 

I'liiLui.'.u'iii i Duo nil., i ... 186 ' 



Philadelphi \. Di C( mbi r 20th, i - 
To the Rev. 1 1 inky A. Boardman, D.D. 

1 ii'.ui Sir : Your friends and immediate fellow-citizens who have listened 
to your discourse on the Onion, are naturally desirous of sharing with the 
country at large the advantages of so valuable a production. 

The spirit of true patriotism which it breathes is especially calculated 
to do good, by being widely diffused at the present moment, while it ir, 
distinguished by a tone of piety that is auspicious at all times, and cannot 
fail to be universally acceptable. 

\n the name of all who had the satisfaction to witness your eloq 
on this interesting occasion, we respectfully ask that you would fa\ 
witli the use of the manuscript for publication. 

With sincere respect and regard. 

Your friends and faithful servants, 
,1. J!. Ingersoll, (i. M. Dallas, 

R. Patterson, W. M. Meredith, 

John K. Fixdlay, Jos; Patterson, 

W. C. Patterson, 1!. M. Patters* 

John W. Forney, Edward Armstrong, 

John S. Riddle. 



Philadelphia, December 20th, 1850. 
To the Rev. Henry A. Board.max, D.D. 

Reverend and Dear Sir: Cordially approving the sentiments expressed 

by you in your recent discourse on the American Union, and believing 
that a more general diffusion of these sentiments would tend to the forma- 
tion of a sound public opinion on this very important subject, and 
desirous, moreover, individually, in some explicit and formal main 
testify our own devoul attachment to the Union, and our utter dissent from 
those who would subvert it, and our determination to abide by tie' C 
tution and laws, and more particularly those laws of the last 
Congress known as the Compromise Aets, we, the undersigned, do mosl 
gratefully and heartily thank you for your eloquent and timely disi 
ou this subject, and request a copy of the same tor publication. 

Alex. W. Mitchell, M.D., Charles B. Tim: 

\V\I. II. DlLLINGH LM, A. V. Parson . 

Lawrence Lewis, John S. Hart, 

Wm. Shippen, M.D., Jami - B. Rogers, 

('. B. Jai Wm. Harris, M.I'.. 

Hugh Elliot, J. N. I ' 

Francis West, M.D., Smith, Murpui A Co., 

Wm. Goodrich, Hog in ,\ Thompson, 

It. R, Beardi n. .i. B. I: 

Ti RNER, Mauris & Hale, J IMI B 

.1 lmes Imbrie, Jr., Lippini oi p, < Ibam 



VI correspoxi>i:.\< E. 



Jno. !.' Vogdes, Peter L. Ferguson, 

John K. Townsend, M.D., Truitt, Brother it Co., 

VV. 11. Gillingham, M.D., Martin & Smith, 

A. I!. Cummings, W. Kirk, 

John II. Brown, Arthur A. Burt, 

Samuel Bood, Morris Patterson, 

William r>. Bieskell, Faust & Winebrexker, 

Musis Johnson. WlLLIAM BROWN, 

Dale, Ross & Withers, 1>. B. Birney, 

Tikis. II. I [OG] . I rEMMIl I. & CRESWELL, 

I >i Mr is T. Pratt, J. G. Mitcheli . 

F. X. Buck, Scott, Baker & Co., 

.1 amis ( Irne, J. ANSPACH, .1 1:.. 

James Schott, Geo. C. Barber, 

Wm. VEITCH, J. W. TlLFORD, 

Lind & Brother, Jno. McArthi 

Taylor & Paulding, Robt. M. Slaymaker, 

I!. P. Butchinson, A. W. Slack, 
Sibley, Moulton & Woodruff, James Burrowes, 

David Springs & Co., Kkorr & Fuller, 

R. B. Brinton & Co., De Cocrsey, Lafourcade & Co. 

James Leslie, Maurice A. Worts, 
Benry 1!. Davis. 



Philadelphia, December 23d, 1850. 
Gentlemen: f cannot doubt that the favor with whicb my late humble 
efforl in behalf of the Union has been received, is to be ascribed more to 
the existing state of the public mind on this subject, than to the intrinsic 
merit of the performance itself. J. do not feel at liberty, however, to 
decline an application emanating from a body of my fellow-citizens so 
honorably representing the commerce of oar city and the learned pro- 
fessions, and comprising gentlemen whose public services have won for 
them the respect and gratitude of the nation, and identified their fame with 
that of the Union. 

In the hope thai the discourse which you have in such flattering terms 
ted for publication may be made, by a good Providence, instrumental 
in promoting in some degree the cause which we all have so much at heart, 
I herewith place the manuscript at your disposal. 
I am, very faithfully, 

Your friend and fellow-citizen, 

II. A. BOARDMAN. 
To the Hon. Joseph I!, [ngersoll, 
Major-General Patterson, 
Bon. George M. Dallas, 
Hon. Wm. M. Meredith, 
I [on. I'll lrles B. Penri 
Bon. A. Y. Parsons, 
Alex. W. Mitchell, M.I > , 
Wm. II. I >illingu \m. I 
Profes sor 1 1 irt, 
Lawrence Li wis, ] 



THE UNION. 



Do ye thus requite the Loud,*) foolish people and unwise? is nol he 
thy father that hath bought thee? hath he not made- thee, and i stablished 
thee? 

Remember the days of old, consider the years <>{ many generati 

ask thy father, and he will show thee; thy elders, and they will tell 

thee. 

When the Most High divided to the nations their inheritance, wh< 
separated the sons of Adam, he set the bounds of the people accord 
the number of the children of Israel. 

For the Lord's portion is his people ; Jacob is the lot of his inherits 

He found him in a desert land, and in the waste howling wilder 
be led him about, he instructed him, he kept him as the apple of hia 

As an eagle stirreth up her nest, fluttered] over hi r yo ing, spreadeth 
abroad her wings, taketh them, beareih them on her wings; 

So the Lord alone did lead him, and there was no strange god with 
him. 

He made him ride on the high places of the earth, that ho might eat tin' 
increase of the fields; and he made him to suck honej out of tie' i 

and nil out of tie' llintv rock : 

Butter nf kin.-, and milk of sheep, with fat of lambs, and ram- i'!' the 

breed "I' Bashan, and goats, with the fat of kidneys of wheat : and thou 
didst drink the pure blood of the grape. — I h i r. 32 : 6-1 I. 

These words delineate with greal beaut) ofimagi r) 
the genera] course of the Divine dispensations towards 
ancient [srael. Susceptible as they are of a read) 
adaptation to our own country, the) suggesl some 
of the various causes for gratitude to the Supreme 
Disposer of events, which should animate our hearts 



8 tiii: UNION. 

as we assemble in our sanctuaries on this Day OF 
Thanksgh inc. But they also intimate (ii* we choose 
thus to appropriate the passage to ourselves) thai we 
are in danger of perverting and losing the munificent 
blessings Providence has conferred upon us. There 
is. I fear, but too much occasion for this warning. 
The pulpit should be very slow to give countenance 
or currency to topics calculated to excite or alarm the 
public mind ; but where the Union itself is in jeopardy, 
both patriotism and religion forbid that it should re- 
main silent. In the judgment of discreet and upright 
men of all parties, a crisis of this kind has now arrived. 
And. indeed, the indications of it are so palpable that 
he only who shuts lii-> eyes can fail to see them. 

I'p to a period quite within the recollection of the 
young men before me. the word. Disunion, was never 
uttered in any part of the Republic hut with ab- 
horrence. The universal sentiment was that the 
Union of these States was to he maintained at all 
hazards — that it was not a question to he discussed — 
and that any individual who should presume to im- 
pugn its sacred obligation would he justly chargeable 
with moral treason, and ought to he regarded as an 
enemy to his country. This wholesome public senti- 
ment has been for several years past gradually giving 
way. Our ears have become familiarized to the word. 
Disunion. A protracted session of Congress has been 
consumed in discussing the thing itself. One State is 
at this moment almost on the verge of secession. 
Others are threatening it. And a large and vigilant 



Till! I Mn\. g 

party elsewhere are pressing favorite measures with 
the lull conviction that, if they succeed in carrying 
them, the Union must and will be riven asunder. 
I nder these circumstances, the pulpit may no more 
keep silence than the press. We have the same civil 
rights as other citizens: and we do not mean lisrhth 
to surrender them. But aside from this, the interests 
of religion in this country are in some sorl confided 
to the keeping of the ministry: and Christianity — not 
Christianity for our own land merely, but for the world, 
and for all coming generations of mankind — has so 
much at stake in the American Union, that, if we 
should refuse to co-operate with our fellow-citizens in 
all legitimate measures for the preservation of that 
I nion, we should he recreant to the Master we pro- 
fess to serve, and unfit to minister at his altar. 

In the original manuscript of Washington's Fare- 
well Address, there is the following paragraph par- 
tially erased. With the exception of the last sentence, 
it was rejected by him : hut no apology will he needed 
for citing it on an occasion like the present : " Besides 
the more serious Causes already hinted as threatening 

our Union, there is one less dangerous, hut sufficiently 
dangerous to make it prudent to he on our guard 
against it. I allude to the petulance of partj differ- 
ences o! opinion. It is not uncommon to hear the 
irritations which these excite, \eiit themselves in 
declarations that the different parts of the United 
States are ill affected to each other, in menaces that 
the I nion will he dissolved 1»\ this, or that measure. 



10 THE UNION. 

[ntimations Like these are as indiscreet as they are 
intemperate. Though frequently made with levity, 
and without any really evil intention, the}' have a 
tendency to produce the consequence which they in- 
dicate 1 . They teach the minds of men to consider the 
Union as precarious; as an object to which the} ought 
not to attach their hopes and fortunes; and thus chill 
the sentiment in its favor. By alarming the pride of 
those to whom they are addressed, they set ingenuity 
at work to depreciate the value of the tiling, and to 
discover reasons of indifference towards it. This is 
not wise. It will he much wiser to habituate our- 
selves to reverence the Union as the Palladium of our 
National happiness; to accommodate constantly our 
words and actions to that idea, and to discountenance 
whatever may suggest a suspicion that it can in any 
event he abandoned." 

It may he douhted whether this paragraph would 
not have been retained, could Washington have 
foreseen the events which an- passing before our eyes. 
For there is a tone of remark now prevalent on this 
subject which indicates a wide-spread and perhaps 
growing disposition to calculate the \alue of the 
Union. That such a problem should in any quarter 
be seriousl) entertained. — that it should not. on 
being propounded, be as summarily and indignantly 
thrusl awa_\ as the question would he. whether 
we shall replace our present form of government 
with a monarchy, — is symptomatic of a decay of that 
Loft} patriotism which once throbbed in every A.me- 



THE UNION. 11 

rican breast. Certain it is that those who can degrade 
a theme like this to the computations of a mere com- 
mercial arithmetic, and resolve the value of the Onion 
as they would adjust a marine venture, or the cosl of 
a cotton-mill, haw never even begun to comprehend 
the extraordinary chain <>f events which led to the 
establishment of this Union, the gigantic difficulties 
which opposed its formation, tin 1 manifold blessings 
which have resulted from it, or the legionary evils 
which would follow its subversion. A proper dis- 
cussion of those several topics in a temperate and 
able manner might well engage the leisure of sunn 
one of our eminenl statesmen at the present junc- 
ture, and could not fail to have a salutary influ- 
ence on the nation at large. 1 propose simply to 
recall your attention to Tin: ORIGIN of Tin; Union, AND 
SOME of TIIK MORE OBVIOUS CONSEQUENCES u HICH WOULD 
i;i; LIKELY TO FLOW FROM ITS DISSOLUTION, — that we ma) 

the better understand what it is that certain parties 
are proposing t<> accomplish. 

The observation lias been often made, that the 
whole current of events connected with the settle- 
ment of America, and the growth ^\' the Colonies, re- 
veals a purpose on the part of Divine Providence to 
found, in this Western Hemisphere, a model govern- 
ment. The\ were no ordinar) men who were sent 
here to lav the foundations of an empire in a wilder- 
ness tenanted 1>\ wild beasts and savages. No nation 
can boasl a more honorable ancestry than that which 



12 THE I M<'\. 

comprises the Puritans, the Huguenots, and the Qua- 
kers, who fled to this continent, that they might enjoy 

•• Freedom to worship God." 

The seeding of the soil gave promise of a ran 1 and 
generous harvest; and amply was the pledge re- 
deemed. They knew not the exalted mission en- 
trusted to them; it was impossible, without the gift of 
prophecy, that they should have known it. But it is 
easy for us to see that, during the entire period of 
their Colonial state, they were preparing for the work 
before them. In their privations and dangers, their 
sicknesses and wars, their mutual rivalries and quar- 
rels; in the unnatural neglect and flagrant oppression 
with which they were treated by the parent govern- 
ment; in the sagacity, enterprise, firmness, and cou- 
rage which their circumstances helped to develop; and 
in the continual accession to their numbers of men of 
kindred principles, who were driven from the Old 
World by persecution or tyranny, — we can detect a 
superhuman agency, which was moulding and strength- 
ening them for the scenes of the Revolution, and the 
responsibilities involved in its successful termination. 
These, it is important to remember, demanded a train- 
ing no Less peculiar than the Revolution itself. It is 
too commonly taken for granted that, with the Peace 
of '83, all danger was over; that the auspicious issue 
of our contest with the mother country was tanta- 
mount to the creation of a free and powerful Republic. 
In a word. that, as soon as their battles were ended. 



tiii: union. 13 

and the chains of their Colonial vassalage broken, our 
fathers had but to sil down in quiet and enjoy the 
benign protection of thai glorious Union which has, 
under Providence, made us the most prosperous nation 
on the globe. This is not only an utter misconception 
dt' the Tacts in the cast 1 , but it is adapted to disparage 
the wisdom and patriotism of the men of the Revolu- 
tion, and to impair our reverence for the Union itself. 
It is scarcely eroine beyond the truth to say that their 
work was but half accomplished with the close of their 
last campaign. They had severed their allegiance to 
the Crown; but they had no adequate government of 
their own. and they were in a situation most unfavor- 
able for the establishment of one. The Union, that 
is, such a Union as their necessities demanded, was 
so far from evolving itself spontaneously from the 
chaos which succeeded the war, that the wisesl and 
best men among them entertained the most anxious 
apprehensions as to the possibility of effecting it at 
all. " It may be in me.*' said one of them,*' a man 
whose comprehensive and penetrating intellect re- 
solved the abstrUSest theorems ill political science as 
by intuition, and who could express his profound and 
luminous views ill a Style which would scarcely suffer 
b\ ;i comparison with that of Junius, — " It ma) be in 
me a delect of political fortitude, but 1 acknowledge 
that 1 cannot entertain an equal tranquillity with those 

who affect to treat the dangers of a long continu- 

Mr. Hamilton. . 



14 THE UNION. 

ance in our present situation as imaginary. A nation 
without a national Government is an awful spectacle. 
The establishment of a Constitution in time of pro- 
found peace, by tho voluntary consent of a whole 
people, is a Prodigy, to the completion of which I 
look forward witli trembling anxiety. I dread the 
more the consequences of new attempts, because I 
know that powerful individuals in this State [New 
York] and other States, are enemies to a general 
national Government in every possible shape."' 

In a similar strain. General Washington, at an ear- 
lier period, two years after the Treaty of Pi ace. wrote 
in Mr. -lay: "What astonishing changes a few years 
are capable of producing ! I am told that even respect- 
able characters speak of a monarchical form of govern- 
ment without horror. From thinking proceeds speak- 
ing; thence to acting is often but a single step. But 
how irrevocable and tremendous! What a triumph 
for our enemies to verify their predictions ! What a 
triumph for the advocates of despotism, to find that 
we are incapable of governing ourselves, and that 
systems founded on the hasis of equal liberty are 
merely ideal and fallacious! Would to God that wise 
measures may ho taken in time to avert the conse- 
quences we have hut too much reason to apprehend!" 

'1'he old Confederation would have been too weak 
e\i 11 for the purposes of war in any other hands than 
those of the pure and aide men who were called to 
conduct the Revolution. And when the outward 
pressure was removed, and the Colonies fell hack 



THE UNION. 1 5 

under tlic sway of their several local usages and 
interests, the compact which united them proved to 
be hut a rope of sand. The condition of the country 
waxed worse and worse, until it seemed to be on the 
verge of some terrible catastrophe. The war had 
dried up its resources. The government was encum- 
bered with a debt which it had no mean- of paving. 
Commerce was at the lowest point of declension. 
The Colonies, oppressed by their necessities, and more 
solicitous to retrieve their own fortunes than those 
of the Union, refused the supplies of mone\ which 
were indispensable to the efficiency of the Confedera- 
tion, and even to its prolonged existence. The go- 
vernment was the very picture of imbecility; without 
troops, without a revenue, without credit, without 
power io enforce its laws at home, or to ins]. ire respect 
abroad. And the reciprocal jealousies of the ( lolonies, 
reviving with the return of peace, afforded little 
ground to hope that any scheme of union could he 
devised in which they would all. or even a major part 
of them, coalesce. The defects of the existing League 

were too palpable to he denied; lint the OlOSl dlSCOrd- 

ant opinions prevailed as to the appropriate remedy. 
This maj be seen in the multiform objections which 
were made to the new Constitution when it came lo 
he submitted to the States for their adoption. Not to 
speak of the monarchical part) alluded i" 1»\ General 
Washington, and which was probablj vers small, 
the following may he taken as a sample of these 
objections: "This one tells us thai the Constitution 



16 THE DNION. 

ought to bo rejected, because it is not a Confederation 
of tin* States, but a government over individuals. 
Another admits that it ought to be a government 
over individuals to a certain extent, but not to the 
extent proposed. A third objects to the want of a 
bill of rights. A fourth would have a bill of rights, 
hut would have it declaratory not of the personal 
rights of individuals, hut of the rights reserved t<> the 
States in their political capacity. A fifth thinks the 
plan would he unexceptionable but for the fatal power 
of regulating the times and places of election. An 
objector in a large State exclaims loudly against the 
unreasonable equality of representation in the Senate. 
An objector in a small State is equally loud against 
the dangerous inequality in the House of Repre- 
sentatives. From one quarter the amazing expense 
of administering the new government is urged ; from 
another the cry is that the Congress will he hut a 
shadow of a representation, and that the government 
would be far less objectionable if the number and 
the expense were doubled. A patriot in a State 
that does not import, discerns insuperable objections 
against the power of direct taxation. The patriotic 
adversary in a state of great exports and imports, is 
not le>s dissatisfied that the whole burden of taxes 
may bo thrown on consumption. This politician 
discovers in the Constitution a direct and irresistible 
tendency to monarchy; thai is equally sure it will 
end in aristocracy."* But it would be wearisome to 

Mr. Madison. 



THE 1 Mux. 1 j 

go on with this catalogue, and cite the objections 

urged against the instrument as a whole, and those 
advanced against the specific provisions appertaining 
severally to the legislative, the judicial, and the i se- 
cutive departments. Enough has been said to >lio\\ 
that the Convention which assembled to frame a 
Constitution had an herculean task to perform; and 
that, without the special illumination of Divine Provi- 
dence, they must have essayed in vain to frame an 
instrument which should unite in its support the 
suffrages of a majority of the States. 

It is an additional consideration of great weight, 
bearing upon this point, that they were without a 
model. There was no existing government which they 
were willing to copy. There was no government of 
antiquity which would at all answer their purpose. 
They were, in truth, not only in advance of their own 
age, but of all ages, in their ideas of civil government. 
We may apply to them what Milton has said of the 
Hebrew prophets ; they appear — 

"As men divinely taught, and better teaching 
I lie solid rules of civil government, 
Ju their majestic, unaffected style, 
Than all the oratory of Greece and Rome; 
In them is plainest taught and easii 
What makes a nation happy, and keeps i ; 

The concise instrument drawn up and signed in 
the cabin of the .May Flower, was the charier of 
an embryo Commonwealth. It recognizes the greal 
principle of equality, and the right and duty of the 
"civil bddy politic," into which the signers organized 



18 THE UNION. 

themselves, to ••enact, constitute, and frame such just 
and equal laws, ordinances, acts, constitutions, and 
offices, as should be thought most convenient for the 
general good of the Colony." This germ expanded. 
It derived nurture from the alternate indifference and 
tyranny of the home government. The Colonists, not 
of Massachusetts only, but of Virginia and the other 
provinces, were compelled to act for themselves. 
They came to regard the "general good" not the honor 
of a throne, or the aggrandizement of an aristocracy, 
as the proper end of government ; and "just and equal 
laws" as the legitimate means by which this end was 
to be promoted. Long before their difficulties with 
the Crown reached their crisis, these ideas had become 
as familiar to their minds as household words. They 
were very unlike the prevailing ideas in the Old 
World. They found no place in the constitutions of 
the most liberal monarchies. Political equality — popu- 
lar suffrage — equal laws — the right of the majority to 
govern — the greatest good of the greatest number as 
the end of government, — these were principles which, 
however they might be entertained by individuals, 
had yet for the first time to be enacted, or even re- 
cognized by any European monarchy. And when 
with these principles is combined another of no less 
importance, that of a representative republic, we shall 
search in vain for any adequate exposition of their 
views even among the so-called republics of ancient or 
modern times. It shows an extraordinary elevation of 
mind, and a moral courage stamped with true sub- 



THE l \l'i.\. 19 

limity, that they should have succeeded in divesting 
themselves of the intolerable thraldrom of precedent 
and authority, and dared to lay the foundations of 
their new structure on principles which no other 
government had made trial of. or which had certainly 
never been tested in such combinations as were novt 
contemplated. These principles alone, however, were 
suited to the emergency, and they applied them with 
a trustful fortitude and a profound wisdom which have 
never ceased (unless they have now ceased) to elicit 
the gratitude of their posterity, and the admiration of 
enlightened and liberal statesmen in all lands. 

Without stopping to illustrate these points in detail. 
lei us advert for a moment to that great principle of 
a representative republic which they invoked to har- 
monize the conflicting rights and interests of the Colo- 
nies. Our minds are so familiar with this principle 
that we are scarcely in a position to appreciate the 
wisdom which guided the Convention to the discovery 
of it (for it was a discovery), and led them to adopt 
it as the core of the new Constitution. They were to 

create a Government or Governments for the Colonies. 
Putting monarch) oul of the question, these plans 
were before them: 1st. Consolidation; the dissolution 
of the thirteen Provincial or State Governments, and 
a general amalgamation under one republican char- 
ter. 2dly. Consolidation in the form of a pure 
democracy. 3dly. The organization <>l' thirteen en- 
tirely independent ( rovernments — republican or demo- 



20 THE UNION. 

cratic. Ithly. A simple Confederation of thirteen 
sovereignties. 

These were the only models to be found in the 
annals of the world. All Governments not mo- 
narchical hud conformed to one or another of these 
types: and vet the statesmen of the Involution had 
the sagacity to see that they were alike either im- 
practicable or insufficient for their purposes. Consoli- 
dation was out of the question ; the Colonies would 
not consent to merge their individual existence in a 
single organization. A pure democracy was imprac- 
ticable even for the States as such. A democracy 
requires the periodical convocation of the entire body 
of the citizens, to conduct its legislation, and is of 
course admissible only in the case of States comprising 
;i very limited territory. This was the favorite scheme 
of a party after the war; and to elude the difficulty just 
stated, they were for dividing the larger Colonies into 
districts of a tractable size. The creation of thirteen 
isolated sovereignties would have been the sure pre- 
cursor and occasion of dissensions and wars. Nor 
would a simple Confederation of such a cluster of sove- 
reignties, the scheme which was advocated by many of 
the most patriotic and influential men of the nation. 
have been essentially better. Such a Confederation 
already existed. Its inadequacy was matter of expe- 
rience. No modification would be of any avail which 
came short of (airing its radical vice, to wit. that of 
providing "legislation for States or Governments in 
their corporate or collective capacities, and as contra- 



THE UNION. 2] 

distinguished from the individuals of whom they con- 
sist." So long as this principle was retained, the States 
might be bound together in a league, but there could 
be no national Union. Nor would a general govern- 
ment he able to enforce its decrees at home or to pro- 
tect its foreign interests, if the execution of its man- 
dates were made contingent upon the legislation of 
other independent sovereignties.* A new principle 
was, therefore needed to meet the exigencies of the 
case; and it w r as found in that of a Representative Re- 
public. The sovereignty of the several States was left 
unimpaired in respect to all matters of local jurisdic- 
tion, while the Federal Government, springing no less 
directly than the State governments from the bosom 
of the people, and operating no less directly upon the 
people, was clothed with the functions requisite for the 
efficient administration of all interests appertaining 
to the general welfare of the Republic. Thus was 
the great problem solved. From the confusion and 
distraction, the imbecility and exhaustion, the con- 
flicting theories and rivalries, of these emancipated 
provinces, emerged the Union, — clothed with majesty 
and honor, radiant with celestial beauty, her temples 
bound with a perennial olive-wreath, and her hands 
tilled with such blessings for the expectant people as 

no nation but God's chosen one had ever dreamed of. 
The patriots of every land hailed her advent as the 
rising of a second sun in the heavens. The down- 

* Sit these points argued in the F< deralist 



22 Tin-: UNION. 

trodden nations of Europe found life and hope even 
in her far-off smile. And as her magic influence 
penetrated their dungeons, the martyrs of liberty felt 
their chains lightened, and blessed God that, although 
their efforts had failed, one nation had at length esta- 
blished its freedom. It was in truth the triumph, 
the first great triumph, of Constitutional Liberty. 
The records of mankind supplied no parallel to it; and 
it Mas a fitting occasion for a jubilee among the friends 
of human progress of ever} creed and country. 

'This cursory glance at the difficulties which were 
surmounted in the formation of our Governmenl may 
serve to enhance our appreciation of the Union, and 
to quicken our gratitude to the men who founded it. 
A nobler race of men, or one who have a stronger 
claim upon the affectionate veneration of mankind, 
the world lias never seen. It is impossible that they 
should he forgotten so long as integrity, patriotism, 
and public virtue, have a being among men. Their 
names (to borrow the sublime tribute of Daniel Web- 
ster to John Hancock — a tribute which we may even 
now appropriate to tin 1 great orator himself) have a 
place as bright and glorious in the admiration of 
mankind. " as if they had been written in letters of 
Lighl on the blue arch of heaven, between Orion and 
the Pleiades." Certain it is. that it' we ever crave to 
do them honor, or to cherish the work of their hands, 
we shall deserve the execration of all future genera- 
tions. For, whatever specious objections may have 
been urged against the Constitution at the period of 



THE DNION. 

its adoption, it is not with us an open question 
whether that immortal instrument was framed with 
all tin- wisdom which has been claimed for it. and 
whether it is adequate to the purposes for which it 
was designed. The seal of mon- than sixtrj years is 
now upon it. and its results are known and read of 
all men. In the crypt of St. Paul's Cathedral, in 
London, is tin 1 tomb of Sir Christopher Wren, the 
architect of that noble structure, and the felicitous 
inscription upon it runs thus: L< dor, si Monumentum 
quceris, Circumspzce! Reader, if you seek his Monu- 
ment, Look Around! So wc may say of our Constitu- 
tion. If you would estimate its value, look AROUND ! 

" How many Sti 
Ami clustering towns, and monuments of fame, 
And scenes of glorious deeds I" 

Contrast the thirteen Colonies of the Revolution 
with our thirty-one States. And then contrast the 
Republic as a whole with any other, even the most 
prosperous, empires of the globe. 1 give utterance 
only to one of our familiar commonplaces when 1 
say, that whether we regard the increase of its popu- 
lation, the development of its resources, the augmen- 
tation of its wealth, its power, and its influence among 
the nations, or the stead} progress of its people in all 
the arts of a refined civilization, the historj of this 
country is unexampled in the annals oi our race. 
Without wishing to chime in with that strain of self- 
complacenl declamation which lias made so many 



24 THE UNION. 

Fourth of July orations an offence to cultivated cars. 
the occasion not only authorizes but compels me to 
say, that there is no people on the earth so free as we 
arc; none who possess such an affluence of all the im- 
munities and appliances, social and political, secular 
and religious, essential to the plenary enjoyment of all 
personal rights, and to the greatest good of the great 
mass of the nation. To prove this would be a work 
of supererogation. If any man can ;t look around" 
and doubt it, he has mistaken his country, and should 
transfer his domicile to a more congenial clime. 

Nor is the extraordinary growth of the United 
States in all the elements which constitute the true 
greatness and glory of a nation, more indisputable 
than is the fact, that we have been steadily opposed 
by most of the leading cabinets of Europe and even 
by the moral influence of the British Government 
and press. England has scarcely yet forgiven us the 
Declaration of Independence. Whether it is because; 
this Union is a standing memento of her folly and 
misgovernment, or because she is jealous of a daughter 
whose ships and spindles compete with her own in 
the markets of the globe, certain it is that she has 
been disposed to look upon us with an evil eye. No 
maternal pride has ever betrayed her into a spontane- 
ous burst of admiration at the enterprise, the intel- 
ligence, and the moral worth of her trans-atlantic 
offspring. When James the Second, one of her faith- 
less kings, whom she drove in indignation from his 
throne, overlooked from the French coast the great 



THE 1 Mux. 25 

naval action of La Hogue, and saw the British, after 
putting to flight that imposing squadron with which 
all his hopes were embarked, pursue their enemy 

in boats into the very shallows, and set fire to 
the ships which would otherwise have escaped, he 

could not restrain his admiration of their gallantry, 
but cried out, "Ah, none but my brave English could 
do this!" But no such paroxysm of generosity has 
ever overcome our venerable mother in contemplating 
this fair country. Instead of exclaiming, as she lias 
marked the gradual transition of this vast wilderness 
into a cultivated continent, covered with towns and 
cities, and smiling harvests, ' ; None but my brave 
children could have done this !" she has too commonly 
detracted from our just feme, and disparaged our 
achievements. This has not, however, affected, in 
the slightest degree, the progress of the country. 
Advancing with a constantly accelerated momentum, 
we have now reached a position which secures to us 
at least the outward respect of cabinets which have 
no love for our principles* 

Certain it is, that neither defamatory presses nor 
official decrees, neither standing armies nor a domi- 
ciliary espionage, nor all these combined, have hem 
able to conceal the truth from the simple-minded pea- 
santry and the degraded operatives of Europe. \\\lr 
in their busy workshops and in their remote mountain 

Ii is pleasanl t,> add, thai a great and beneficent change 
have taken place in the feeling of England towards this country, within 
the ten years which I d aioce this Disconr ten. 



26 THE UNION. 

chalets, the name of the United States is a talisman to 
them. The salutation, "I am an Ameiican citizen," 
is the best passporl a stranger can have to their con- 
fidence. Often have I seen their eyes sparkle on 
hearing it; and the sight made me proud of my coun- 
try. It was the boast of the ancient Roman that the 
watchword, "I am a Roman citizen," would secure 
him personal respect throughout the known world. 
l)i it it was the dread of the imperial eagles which 
insured his safety. No such sentiment protects the 
American abroad. It is not the inspiration of fear, 
but of love, which lights up the countenances of the 
common people at his approach. They know little of 
politics, and less of geography. They have read but 
few books. They could give no very lucid account of 
this country. But they have these two ideas about it 
inwrought into their minds, viz.. that it is a free coun- 
try, and that the people are comfortable and con- 
tented. This makes it a land of hope to them. This 
makes them long to get here. This constitutes the 
subtle, mysterious influence, which has gone out from 
our Union into all the hamlets and all the mines and 
forges of Europe; and which is drawing their tenantry 
towards us with an agency as irresistible as that 
which keeps the needle to the pole. This it was 
which made an honest, truthful peasant, who lived in 
one of those lofty valleys at the base of Mont Blanc, 
saj to a party of Americans, a year or two since: 
•• Not Less than two hundred of ni) neighbors have 
gone from this small valley to your country, and 

o ... 



THE [JNION. 27 

nothing but the want of means keeps me from fol- 
lowing them." I say again, I was proud to hear it. 
These unbought testimonies to the all-pervading and 
blessed influence of my countrj — testimonies picked 
up by the wayside, and by the cotter's hearth, and 
the shepherd's fold, from reapers, and wagoners, and 
guides, and laborers — are worth more than all the 
studied compliments ever bestowed upon America l>\ 
courtly diplomatists. It is something to belong t<> a 
land which looms up in this way before all nations, 
as a land of peace and plenty, of virtue and safety — 
as an asylum where the oppressed may find a refuge 
from tyranny, and the poor the amplest scope and 
encouragement for frugal industry. It is something 
to belong to a land which is known wherever the foot 
of civilized man has trod, not by her Caesars and 
Napoleons, not by her bloody wars and conquests, but 
by her Washingtons and Franklins, her civil and 
religious liberty, her equal laws, and her thriving 
populations. 

That such a land should draw upon the Old World 
is not surprising. The philosophy (^ the fad is suffi- 
ciently simple, and it was set forth by one of the illus- 
trious orators of the Revolution with a felicit) which 
IS equalled only by his extraordinary prophetic an- 
nouncement of the fad Itself. Immediately alter the 
close of the Revolution, Patrick Henry delivered a 
speech of great power in the Assembly of \ irginia, in 
favor of a Liberal policy on the subjed of immigration. 
Contrasting the expanse of our territory with the 



28 THE UNION. 

scanty population, he observed, ''Your great want, 
Sir, is the want of men, and these you must have, and 

will have speedily, if you arc wise. Do you ask, how 
are you to get thorn? Open your doors. Sir. and they 
will ooino in ; the population of the Old World is full 
to overflowing ; that population is ground, too, by the 
oppressions of the governments under which they Live. 
Sir, they are already standing on tiptoe upon their 
native shores, and looking to your coasts with a wish- 
ful and longing eye; they see here a land blessed with 
natural and politieal advantages, which are not equalled 
by those of any other country upon earth ; a land 
on which a gracious Providence hath emptied the horn 
of abundance; a land over which Peace hath now 
stretched forth her white wings, and where Content 
and Plenty Ho down at every door ! Sir, they see 
something still more attractive than all this: they see 
a land in which Liberty hath taken up her abode; 
that Liberty whom they had considered as a fabled 
goddess, existing only in the fancies of poets ; they 
sec here a real divinity, her altars rising on every 
hand throughout these happy States, her glories 
chanted by three millions of tongues, and the whole 
region smiling under her hlessed influence. Sir. let 
but this celestial goddess, Liberty, stretch forth her fair 
hand toward the people of the Old World, tell them 
to conic, and hid them welcome; and you will see 
them pouring in from the north, from the south, from 
the east, and from the west ; your wilderness will he 
cleared and settled, your deserts will smile, your ranks 



THE UNION. 29 

will be filled; and you will soon be in a condition to 
defy the powers of any adversary." 

Liberty did "stretch forth her hand towards the 
Old World," and this eloquenl prophecy glided 
into history. The three millions who chanted h< -r 
glories have now become twenty-five millions; and 
the mighty current of humanity is setting towards our 
shores with a depth and a majesty which are enough 
to awe every thoughtful beholder. There are various 
aspects, economical, political, and religious, in which 
this imposing movement may be viewed. The two- 
fold object for which it is cited here is to illustate, on 
the one hand, the unprecedented growth of our coun- 
try; and, on the other, the Antaean hold winch this 
Union lias taken upon the other hemisphere. With- 
out restricting the remark to this wonderful migration 
from the Old World to the New, we are sale in affirm- 
ing that the sublime spectacle of a self-governed and 
well-governed nation has told with prodigious effect 
upon the dynasties of Europe, for " the greatest 
engine of moral power known to human affairs is an 
organized, prosperous State. All that man in his 
individual capacity can do — all that he can effect by 
his private fraternities, by his ingenious discoveries 
and wonders of art, or bj his influence over others — is 
as nothing, compared with the collective, perpetuated 
influence on human affairs and human happiness of a 
well-constituted, powerful commonwealth. It blesses 
generations with its sweet influence. Evi n the barren 
earth seen i> to pour out its fruits under a system where 



30 THE ONION. 

rights and property are secure; whilst her fairest gar- 
dens arc blighted by despotism."* Such an example 
has been before the world for more than half a cen- 
tury ; and while it is impossible to trace the influences 
which have gone out from it upon the other hemi- 
sphere, all parties arc agreed that it lias had a most 
effective agency in bringing about the ameliorating 
changes which have taken place in the European 
Governments. The reforms in those governments, 
which have consisted essentially in raising the people 
from a condition of political nonentity to a substan- 
tive power in the State, have drawn their animating 
breath and derived their most effective support, from 
the precedent supplied by these United States. If the 
Nesselrodes and Metternichs of the day are competent 
witnesses, this country has been the great laboratory 
from whence -liberal ideas" have been continually 
flitting across the ocean and disturbing the Dead Sea 
tranquillity of the venerable despotisms of Europe. 
The extent to which these ideas have permeated the 
masses there is really surprising, when one considers 
the vigilance and severity with which tyranny every- 
where guards its usurpations. Many a generous strug- 
gle has proved abortive, and hecatombs of brave hut 
unfortunate patriots have been immolated to the 
Moloch of absolutism ; but the cause of freedom has 
on the whole advanced. The nations are not where 
they were at the commencemenl of this century ; and 



■ Mr. Edward Everett. 



THE i Mm\. :;i 

unless we betray our trust, and extinguish the light 
which now allures them on to freedom, there is little 
Likelihood that they will ever consent to resume their 
chains. If we guard this vestal flame upon which so 
many anxious eyes are turned, the political renova- 
tion of the world must go on. Other lands will be 
emancipated, and the prophetic vision of (In- poet will 
be realized: 

" I saw ili" i spectanl nations stand, 
To c atch tin' coming flame in turn ; 
I saw from ready hand to hand 
The clear, tho ! struggling, glorj burn. 

" Ami each, as she received th<> Same, 
Lighted her altar with its ray : 
Then, smiling to the next who came, 
Speeded it on it 9 sparkling waj ." 

No man who believes that there is a Providence, 
can take even a brief retrospect of our history, like 
that which has now engaged our attention, with- 
out discovering innumerable evidences of hi^ benig- 
nant agency. 11« who i\~w^ not see a Divine hand 
directing and controlling the whole course of oui 
affairs, from the landing of the colonists at James- 
town and Plymouth until the present hour, would 
hardly have seen the pillar of fire had lie been with 
the Hebrews in the wilderness. This I nion is not 
of man. It is the work of God. Among the 
achievements of his wisdom and beneficence in con- 
ducting the secular concerns of the world, it must 



32 THE UNION. 

be ranked as one of his greatest and best works. 
And he who would destroy it, is chargeable with the 
impiety of attempting to subvert a structure which is 
eminently adapted to illustrate* the perfections of the 
Deity, and to bless the whole family of man. 

There are. however, — the fact cannot be disguised, — 
parties actually at work, endeavoring to destroy the 
Union. A party at the South and another party at 
the North, the poles apart in their speculative views 
of the subject which agitates them, and inflamed with 
a bitter mutual hostility, lane virtually joined hands 
for the purpose of demolishing this Government. This 
is not, indeed, as to one of these parties, the osten- 
sible object they have in view; but it is essentially 
involved in that object, and they know it. They must, 
therefore, be held to the responsibility of aiming at 
a dissolution of the Union, equally with those inha- 
bitants of the Southern States who avow this as their 
aim. 

The subject which has occasioned this commotion 
is Slavery. The Southern Disunionists would secede, 
because Congress, at its late session, passed certain 
acts abridging, as they allege, the rights of the slave- 
holding States; and the Northern Disunionists insist 
upon the repeal of a law passed at the same time, 
entitled the Fugitive Slave Law. even though its 
abrogation should Involve a dissolution of the Union. 
M\ business as a Northern man, and a citizen of a 
free State, is with the latter of these parties, or rather 



TIIK UNION. 

with the North generally. In the feu observations 
T am about to make on the subject, I Bhall simply 
reiterate sentiments which have been so often and so 
eloquently expressed both in Congress and out of it, 
that they have become familiar to every well-informed 
citizen. But I may say that the man who can put 
the American Union, with its untold and inconceiv- 
able blessings into one scale, and the repeal of the 
Fugitive Slave Law into the other, and then strike 
the balance in favor of the latter, is without a proto- 
type in the history of the race, until we get hack to 
the record of that primeval tempter who said to our 
first mother. " Ye shall not surely die." 

"She plucked, she oat! 
Earth frit the wound, and Nature from her scat. 
Sighing through all her works, gave signs of woe, 
Thai all was lost!" 

In saying this, I utterly disclaim any design to be- 
come the champion of Slavery. I have never set my- 
self to defend it; and by the grace <>1' God 1 never will. 
1 concur in the estimate which is put upon it by the 
people of the North, and by tens of thousands of our 
Southern countrymen, that it is a colossal evil ; and 
that no consummation is more devoutlj to be wished 
and prayed lor than its removal. lint I can as little 
undertake the championship of Northern agitators 
and fanatics as that of Slavery. I believe the) are 
the wor^t enemies <>r the slave, and the must efficient 
protectors of Slavery; and as Buch, I can have no 



34 1 HE I M'»X. 

fellowship with them. The law to which the} objecl 

in;i\ be, or it may not be, defective 01 unjusl in some 
of its provisions. If it is, it will no doubt at the 
proper time lie amended; if it is not, it will stand. 
But what we arc called upon to discountenance, is 
the spirit in which this excitement is promoted — the 
recklessness and violence with which the uncondi- 
tional repeal of the obnoxious law is demanded, irre- 
spective of consequences — the abusive attacks which 
are constantly made upon the South — and the whole 
system of measures put in operation to alienate the 
two portions of the confederacy, and bring about a 
disruption. 

However the fact may be contemned by the radical 
Abolitionists, it behooves ns all to remember, what 
even tin 1 cursory retrospect presented in this discourse 
musl have made sufficiently manifest, that the Union 
of these States was a matter of compromise. Ob- 
structed as it was by the most serious impediments, it 
could never have been effected had not all the parties 
concerned been animated by a rare spirit of accom- 
modation. General Washington, in submitting the 
draft oi* the new Constitution to Congress, thus ex- 
presses himself in his official letter as the President of 
tic Convention: "In all our deliberations on this 
subject, we kept steadily in our view that which ap- 
pears to us the greatest interesl of every true Ame- 
rican, the consolidation of our Union, in which is 
involved our prosperity, felicity, safety, perhaps our 
national existence. This important consideration, 



Tin: onion. 

seriously and deeply impressed on our minds, Led 
each state in the Convention to be less rigid on points 
of inferior magnitude than mighl have been other- 
wise expected; and thus the Constitution which we 
now present is the result of a spirit of amity, and of 
that mutual deference and concession which the pecu- 
liarity of our political situation rendered indispen- 
sable." 

In this spirit the Union originated, and in this 
spirit it lias, under God's blessing, been preserved. 
On most of* the important measures of the government 
the country has been divided into two great parties. 
We have passed through various crises, which have 
tested the loyalty of one parly or of the other, as 
the ca-e might he, as in a fiery furnace. Take for ex- 
ample the following measures: Jay's Treat] — the Em- 
bargo—the War of 1812 — the Missouri question— the 
Nullification controversy — the admission of Texas — 
and the Mexican War. Each of these measures was 
highly offensive to a large portion of the American 
people. The legislation of Congress was. in some of 
the cases, resisted by statesmen of the most eminent 
abilities, as being in the face of the Constitution, and 
destructive to our host interests. But when the acts 
were passed, the law-abiding spirit ef the Anglo-Saxon 
race began to work, and all parties acquiesced, w 
have a striking illustration of this in one of the most 
recent oi the measures just mentioned, — the admission 
oi Lexas. The major part of the population in the 
free States regarded this, in the manner in which it 

:; 



36* THE UNION. 

was done as a gross invasion of the Constitution. A 
distinguished citizen of South Carolina, formerly Go- 
vernor of that State, has remarked, in a letter recently 
published, that "the admission of Texas furnished a 
far greater provocation to the North to secede, than 
the admission of California does to the South, with 
the auxiliary stipulations incident to the former."* 
But we did not secede. Nobody talked of seceding, 
except the party who are driving at disunion now. 
The sober sense and enlightened patriotism of the mass 
of the people, fortified by sixty years' experience, have 
taught them the necessity of forbearance, and made 
them feel that it is far better to submit even to mea- 
sures which they believe to be wrong and hurtful, than 
to break up the Union. They have no notion of set- 
ting the ship on tin 1 because the captain deals out some 
obnoxious orders. They choose rather to wait till 
the ship returns to port, and then, if they can. get a 
new captain. In this spirit the compromise measures 
of the last session ought to be treated. They were 
not party measures, for none of the recognized parties 
was, as such, satisfied with them. But they supplied 
the only platform on which men of all parties could 
meet ; and this is a sufficient reason why the country 
should acquiesce in them. 

That a statute respecting fugitive slaves should form 
a pari n\' this series of pacificatory measures, was a 
thing of course. One of the chief compromises of the 

* General James Hamilton's Letter to the People of South Carolina. 



THE DNION. 

Constitution itself relates to this very subject. The 
South would not come into the I nioii without some 
guarantee on this point, and the following section 
(Art. IV, Sect. 2) was adopted by the Convention — 
I believe unanimously: "No person hold to service 01 
labor in one State, under tho laws thereof, escaping 
into another, shall, in consequence of any law or regu- 
lation therein, be discharged from such service or 
labor, but shall be delivered up on claim of the part) 
to whom such service or labor may be duo.'" A law 
was enacted under Washington's administration, and 
with his approval, to carry this provision of the ('(in- 
stitution into effect.* This law had of late years 
been rendered nugatory in some of the States by local 
legislation, and it became necessary to replace it with 
another. This is the statute which is now exciting 
so much opposition, and the execution of which lias 
been resisted with so much violence. These demon- 
strations, although professedly directed against some 
of the details of the act, are to a great extent levelled 

It musl be recorded, to Ihe lasting honor of Pennsylvania, that she 
was the first of the thirteen States to abolish slavery. This was done 

under the administration of President R 1. in 1780. Ai ream- 

Btance worthy of note, thai the act embraces a provision for the extradi- 
tion of fugitive slaves. The following is an extract from b set 
tion : '• Provided always, and be it farther enacted, that this act, or anything 
in it contained, shall not give any relief or shelter to any abscondii 
runaway negro, or mulatto Blave, or servant, who baa absented himself, or 
shall absent hima If, from his or her owner, master, or m 
in any other State or country; but Buch owner, , shall 
have like right and aid to demand, claim, and take a« i 
Bervant, as he might have had in case this ad bad not been ma 



38 THE UNION. 

against its principle. We do the party concerned in 
them no injustice in supposing that they would be 
equally hostile to any adequate law designed to effect 
the same object. 

In this view, one cannot but be struck with the 
flexible morality which can declaim fiercely about the 
inalienable rights of man, while it is trampling under 
its feet one of the most sacred covenants which ever 
bound a people together. There is no difference of 
opinion as to the meaning of the Constitutional pro- 
vision on this subject. To that provision, in common 
with the others, our fathers assented, and we have 
assented. It is one of the terms of a compact into 
which we have, as a people, entered with one another ; 
and which is just as binding upon us as any other of 
its provisions. Our judgment may condemn it. It 
may be revolting to our feelings. But this is nothing 
to the purpose. We are under no obligation to re- 
main in a country which we believe to be governed 
by oppressive laws ; there is nothing to prevent our 
flying to any land which rejoices in a milder code and 
a more rational liberty. But as long as we continue 
citizens of this Union, we must abide by its Constitu- 
tion, and obey its laws.* And we cannot consent to 
take lossons in ethics from those who deny this propo- 
sition. The first requisite we demand in a teacher of 
morals, is that he bo a moral man himself. And when 



* it i s ,,,.- rv, for tin' purposes of the present argument, to 

the limitations of this principle. 



THE UNION. 39 

a covenant-breaker comes to expound to us our obli- 
gations, we feel disposed to decline his instructions 
and to say to him, 

"Your nickname, virtue; vice, you should have spoke ; 
For virtue's office never breaks men's troth.'' 

To some persons this may sound very unfeeling 
as regards the slave. I will not reply by saying, that 
the Apostle Paul thought it no sin to send a fugitive 
back to his master. But this is a case where we 
are not at liberty to take counsel merely of our sympa- 
thies. The obligation of contracts is not made con- 
tingent upon men's feelings; and if this plea was to 
be urged at all, it should have been before the Consti- 
tution was adopted. We do not, however, rest our 
answer to the objection upon this ground only. We are 
not willing to concede a monopoly of all the sympathy 
which is entertained for the bondman, to the party 
which is clamoring for an unconditional repeal of the 
Fugitive Slave Law. So far from it, we claim to be 
the truest friends of the slave. We believe that, as 
well for nations and in respect to public affairs, as for 
individuals, " Honesty is the best policy;" and that 
kindness to the colored race, no less than patriotism, 
demands a faithful adherence, on the part of all con- 
cerned, to the stipulations of the Constitution. By 
that instrument, the exclusive jurisdiction of slaver) 
is reserved to the several States. We have no more 
right to dictate to South Carolina what she shall do 
with her slaves, than she has to prescribe to Pennsyl- 



40 THE UNION. 

vania what railroads we shall construct, or what hanks 
we shall charter. Nor does the responsibility of her 
system of servitude any more attach to us, than does 
the responsibility of the serfdom of Russia. 

The Northern abolitionists (I use the term in its 
technical sense), impressed, it would seem, with a con- 
viction that their proper responsibilities, sectional and 
national, secular and spiritual, are not commensurate 
with their capacities, have volunteered to shoulder by 
much the heaviest portion of the obligations resting 
upon the Southern States. The South declines the 
proffered civility; but they press their attentions. The 
South remonstrates, on the ground that the contem- 
plated interference would be highly prejudicial to her 
tranquillity; but her officious friends insist upon it 
as their right to help her manage her private affairs. 
The South at length puts herself in an attitude of 
resistance, and points to the solemn compact in the 
Constitution ; but they reply, with an air of triumph, 
that they are governed by a " higher hue" and that 
under that law, it is not only their right, but their 
duty, to take charge of her slaves. And what have 
they accomplished by this Quixotic generosity'? They 
hav.e riveted the fetters of the slave. The}' have de- 
terred at least three States, Maryland, Virginia, and 
Kentucky, from carrying out the plans of prospective 
emancipation they were just entering upon when 
this outbreak of misguided philanthropy occurred at 
the North. They have 1 scattered the seeds of discord 
and alienation broadcast through the Confederacy. 



THE UNION. 41 

In a word, protesting that they were the exclusive 
friends of the slave, they have taken him to their 
breasts with a hug which reminds one of the embrace 
of that terrific automaton of the Virgin found in the 
dungeons of the " Holy Inquisition," which, clasping 
the victim in its arms and pressing him to its bosom, 
transfixed him with a thousand concealed spikes and 
poniards. And their fitting auxiliaries in all this 
crusade against the South, have been British emissa- 
ries; the subjects of that crown which, in the face of 
the remonstrances of some of the Colonies, planted 
slavery in our soil and fostered it into manhood, and 
which at this moment has millions of subjects at 
home and in its Colonies, who would be the gainers 
in physical comfort, and even in spiritual privilege, 
by exchanging places with our Southern slaves. 

The failure of all past efforts at the North to ame- 
liorate the condition of the slave, is not more palpable 
than is the certainty, that the grand expedient now 
contemplated would prove equally abortive. For, 
suppose radicalism could achieve its purpose and split 
the Union to pieces, 7ww would this help the slave? 
Does any man, not a tenant of a Lunatic Asylum, 
believe that Disunion would mitigate the evils of 
Southern servitude? Would it bring about a relax- 
ation of the laws which regulate it? Would it incline 
the planters to put books and pens into the hands of 
their slaves'? Would it facilitate the flight of fugi- 
tives'? Would it conciliate the various legislatures 
towards schemes of emancipation? No out 1 is so 



42 THE UNION. 

infatuated as to affirm this. The most frantic aboli- 
tionists must he aware, that the disruption of the 
Union would put a cup of gall and wormwood to the 
lips of ever) slave; that it would be a signal for the 
enactment of more stringent laws than have ever 
appeared upon the Southern statute-books; and for 
the institution of a system of surveillance on every 
plantation and in every household, the rigor of which 
has no parallel in the records of American bondage. 

In the name, then, of three millions of slaves, we 
protest against all schemes for dissolving the Union. 
We believe that, terrible as such a catastrophe would 
be to the whites, it would be no less so to the blacks ; 
that it would abridge their privileges, augment their 
burdens, and postpone by many years the period of 
their ultimate emancipation. We should be crimin- 
ally indifferent to their welfare, as well as faithless 
to those sacred bonds which have hitherto united 
the North and the South in an honorable and affec- 
tionate brotherhood, if we could remain silent when 
sincere but mistaken religionists and unprincipled 
demagogues have well-nigh precipitated the country 
into this frightful abyss. And we arc all the more 
disposed to break silence, because we believe that, of 
the two classes of agitators just named, the latter has 
a great deal more to do with the present excitement 
than the former. There is, it is true, a settled convic- 
tion in the minds of the Northern people that slavery 
is a great evil, and there is an anxious desire to see 
the country rid of it. But, left to itself, this feeling 



THE UNION. 43 

is as still as it is strong and deep; and it never could 
have been lashed into the foaming surges which now 
break over the land, but through the systematic, 
crafty, and wicked exertions of political demagogues. 
There were men in the ancient republics whose motto 
it was, 

" Better to reign in hell than serve in Heaven ;" 

and they cared not what became of their country, so 
they were promoted. Monsters, it has been said, cannot 
perpetuate their species ; but this species, if not per- 
petuated, has been reproduced, for we indubitably have 
them among ourselves. Like Erostratus, who, when 
put to the torture, confessed that his motive in setting 
fire to the temple of Diana at Ephcsus, was to gain 
himself a name with posterity, these men appear to 
be intent upon attracting to themselves the attention 
of the world, even though it can be done only by 
applying the torch of civil war to this glorious Union. 
Let us hope that a merciful Providence may baffle 
their designs ; that the upright and law-abiding people 
whom they have, for the time, bewitched with their 
enchantments, may detect the real character of their 
leaders; and that these ebullitions of fanaticism may 
soon give place to those patriotic and conciliatory 
sentiments which, in every previous crisis of our 
history, have proved equally efficacious against do- 
mestic faction and foreign aggression. 

It would be well for all classes of our citizens, at 
this critical juncture, to look Disunion fairly in the 



44 THE UNION. 

face. Its unavoidable effects upon the colored popu- 
lation constitute but a tithe of the evils which would 
now from it, Not to exhaust your patience by going 
into the question at large, let it suffice to say, that 
Disunion not only involves a fratricidal war, but that 
it would undoubtedly lead to a continued series of 
contentions and disruptions among the States. It 
seems to be taken for granted that, if we divide, we 
divide into two confederations. But why stop at 
two \ It would be quite as natural, certainly, to form 
four confederations as two. And how long should we 
pause at four? A sense of common danger might 
hold the new combinations together for a season ; but 
this would give place, after a while, to local and more 
potent influences. The strength of the Union lies 
not in its physical, but its moral power. Its real 
buttresses are not its army and navy, its mines and 
factories, its canals and railroads — not even its writ- 
ten constitutions and charters, its laws and tribunals ; 
but its sacred traditions, the inwrought and, until 
lately, universal conviction of its unparalleled benefits, 
and that sense of its sanctity which has made tin 1 
nation regard it with a reverential awe akin to that 
with which the Hebrews looked upon the ark of the 
covenant, The feeling has been that the Union was 
an ark of the covenant to us, — that it was the re- 
pository of our most precious national mementoes, 
the symbol of the Divine presence with us, and the 
pledge of his future protection. This feeling is not 
to be ascribed to any specific training. It is no set 



THE UNION. 4.") 

lesson wc have learned at school, or which has been 
drilled into us like a code of morals or a code of 
manners at home. We have inherited it from the 
mothers who horc us. We have inhaled it in the air 
of heaven. It has gathered nourishment from the 
scenes of our firesides, from our daily employments, 
from our journeys, from our sanctuaries, from our na- 
tional anniversaries, from all our experiences and all 
our associations. It has grown with our growth and 
strengthened with our strength, and imperceptibly 
become a part of our being. And this it is which, 
under God, has made the Union so strong ; it is be- 
cause its roots are struck down into our hearts, and 
so interlaced with the very framework of our moral 
being, that they seem to belong to our personal 
identity. 

Now dissolve the Union, and not only do we cease 
to be what we have been, as individuals, but the 
power of the Union over us is gone, and gone forever. 
You annihilate by one stroke, that feeling of its sanc- 
tity which has done more to preserve it than all other 
causes combined. And it matters not whether you 
merely cleave it in halves or divide it down into 
quarters or eighths. One pebble will spoil a mirror as 
well as a handful. The people will have learned, from 
a single rupture, that the Union can be broken: a 
most fatal discovery. For when they have broken it 
once, they will not scruple, if occasion serves, to break 
it, or rather to break its fragments, again ; I'm- it will 
have ceased to be the Union. We shall no longer 



4G THE UNION. 

have a national existence. The great events of our 
history — the illustrious names which adorn our annals 
— the heritage of renown committed to ns — can no 
longer be appealed to as incentives to virtuous con- 
duct, or as rallying-crics in seasons of peril. What 
orator will dare allude to Bunker Hill or York- 
town, to Champlain or Erie? What Senator will dare 
invoke the name of Washington — or to speak of 
Henry and Marshall, of Greene and Morgan, of Jack- 
son and Harrison, of Hull and Bainbridgc I These 
illustrious men toiled and bled for the UNION ; and 
when we shall have destroyed the work of their 
hands, and resolved the almost perfect government 
they established and defended at so great a cost, into a 
group of petty jarring confederacies, shame will con- 
spire with ingratitude in consigning their names, their 
honors, and their sufferings, to a speedy and an eter- 
nal oblivion. Nothing — if this calamity awaits ns — 
nothing presents itself to our expectations, but a 
future as humiliating and disastrous, as our past has 
been bright and ennobling. Instead of that benefi- 
cent mission which we have been wont to suppose 
had been confided to us, of leading the nations on to 
freedom and happiness, we may look forward to pro- 
tracted scenes of anarchy and bloodshed, which will 
sicken and discourage the patriots of other lands, and 
supply the partisans of arbitrary power with a tri- 
umphant proof that nations require a master. 

We are not at liberty to disregard this consideration. 
Even if* we were so lost to virtue and patriotism as to 



THE UNION. 47 

be reckless of the fate of our own countrymen, we 
could not elude the responsibilities which rest upon us 
in reference to the world at large. This Union cannot 
expire as the snow melts from a rock, or a star dis- 
appears from the firmament. When it falls, the crash 
will be heard in all lands. Wherever the winds of 
Heaven go, that will go, bearing sorrow and dismay 
to millions of stricken hearts. Not the dismay and 
sorrow incident to the blighting of their own pros- 
pects, and the breaking up of their household plans ; 
but the deep and inconsolable grief occasioned by a 
calamity so startling and so disastrous in its bearings 
upon the happiness of mankind, as to leave the mind 
no opportunity for expatiating on its own private mis- 
fortunes. For the subversion of this Government will 
render the cause of constitutional liberty hopeless 
throughout the world. What nation can govern itself, 
if this nation cannot \ What encouragement will any 
people have to establish liberal institutions for them- 
selves, if ours fail \ Providence has laid upon us the 
responsibility and the honor of solving that problem in 
which all coming generations of men have a profound 
interest, whether the true ends of government can lie 
secured by a popular representative system. In the 
munificence of his goodness, he put us in possession 
of our heritage, by a series of interpositions scarcely 
less signal than those which conducted the Hebrews 
to Canaan; and He has, up to this period, withheld 
from us no immunities or resources which might 
facilitate an auspicious result, Never before was a 



48 THE UNION. 

people so advantageously situated for working out this 
great problem in favor of human liberty. And it is 
important for us to understand that the world so 
regards it. The argument with which Napoleon in- 
flamed the ardor of his troops on the eve of his great 
battle near Cairo, was in these pregnant words : " Sol- 
diers, consider that from the summits of yonder Pyra- 
mids, forty centuries look down upon you." What- 
ever the rhetoricians may say of this speech, they must 
at least admit that the principle to which it appeals, 
constitutes one of the most powerful springs of human 
action, and that no man is at liberty to disregard its 
promptings. We, certainly, are bound to remember 
that the nations are looking to us, not for themselves 
only, but for the " centuries" which are to follow, to 
learn whether " order and law, religion and morality, 
the rights of conscience, the rights of person, and the 
rights of property, may all be preserved and secured 
in the most perfect manner by a government entirely 
and purely elective." If, in the frenzy of our base 
sectional jealousies, we dig the grave of the Union, 
and thus decide this question in the negative, no 
tongue may attempt to depict the disappointment and 
despair which will go along with the announcement 
as it spreads through distant lands. It will be at once 
the most unlooked-for and the most irrefragable testi- 
mony ever given to the idea, that nations are made 
only to obey. It will be America, after fifty years' 
experience 1 , in the course of which period she had 
done more to inspire the nations with a desire for 



THE UNION. 49 

liberal institutions, than all other popular governments 
combined could effect in the lapse of ages, recording 
her adhesion to the doctrine, that man was not made 
for self-government. It will be Freedom herself pro- 
claiming that Freedom is a chimera ; Liberty ringing 
her own knell all over the globe. And when the 
citizens or subjects of the governments which are to 
succeed this Union shall visit Europe, and see in some 
land, now struggling to cast off its fetters, the lacerated 
and lifeless form of Liberty laid prostrate under the 
iron heel of despotism, it will not much relieve the 
horror of the spectacle, to reflect that the blow which 
destroyed her was inflicted by their own country. 

" So the struck Eagle, stretched upon the plain, 
No more through rolling clouds to soar again, 
Viewed his own feather on the fatal dart, 
And winged the shaft that quivered in his heart : 
Keen were his pangs, but keener far to feel, 
He nursed the pinion which impelled the steel; 
While the same plumage that had warmed his nest, 
Drank the last life-drop of his bleeding breast." 

Nor is this the only aspect in which the issues of 
Disunion present themselves to our contemplation. 
We are forced to consider them as well in respect to 
our spiritual, as our civil and social interests. For 
the most remarkable characteristic of this whole move- 
ment is, that the sacred name of RELIGION should be 
invoked to sanction measures adapted to destroy this 
government, — the Union is to be broken up for the 
sake of religion ! The lofty morality of the Scriptures 



50 THE UNION. 

will not permit us to live together under a constitution 
which authorizes the Fugitive Slave Law; and we 

must separate. 

"I thought where all thy circling wiles would end : 
In feigned religion, smooth hypocrisy I" 

It needed but this ingredient to consummate the 
superlative madness and impiety of this scheme. For, 
if there is any one great national interest upon which 
the disruption of these States would fall with a crush- 
ing weight, it is our Christianity, — that interest 
which as much surpasses all others in importance as 
it will in duration. 

There is no land where Christianity has achieved 
nobler victories than it has here. Enjoying at once 
plenary protection from the State and the utmost free- 
dom, it has developed itself with a purity and an 
energy rarely witnessed in the Old World. It was a 
sublime undertaking, that of supplying, without the 
aid of endowments or government patronage, churches 
and spiritual teachers for a youthful and growing nation 
like this, diffused over so great an expanse of territory. 
And the predictions of failure were equally sanguine 
and universal among the adherents of the ecclesiasti- 
cal establishments of Europe. But these predictions 
have not been verified. We may venture to assert, 
without violating the modesty proper to the occasion, 
that Christianity has accomplished far more than its 
friends could have anticipated ; that the efficiency of 
the voluntary principle, as displayed here, has excited 



THE UNION. hi 

the astonishment of its bitterest opponents ; and that 
we have done more by our example to refute the 
vicious theories of foreign statesmen and ecclesiastics, 
and to promote the progress of religious liberty on 
that side of the water, than could have been done b\ 
whole libraries of polemical divinity. The time for- 
bids me to go into detail. But no candid observer 
can survey our country, in its moral and religious 
features, without being impressed with the grandeur 
of the results already achieved here. Not to speak 
of the churches with which the land is dotted 
over ; the large body of educated and evangelical 
clergymen who occupy our pulpits and conduct most 
of the higher literary institutions ; the liberal sums 
spontaneously contributed for the support and propa- 
gation of the Gospel ; and the promptitude with 
which further subsidies and ucav laborers are sup- 
plied, as fresh fields demand cultivation, — look at 
the benign and powerful influence religion has ex- 
erted upon the population at large. There was a 
work to be done here so indispensable that the gov- 
ernment could not get on tranquilly without it. but 
which the government could not do. Religion has 
done it. It has been the chief agent in establishing 
our systems of education. It has been the main- 
spring of most of the humane institutions designed to 
alleviate the wants and improve the condition of the 
people. It has gone down among the masses, ;iih1 no! 
only fed them and clothed them, but renovated their 
principles, restrained their passions, taught them their 



52 THE UNION. 

duties, and made them value their privileges. It has 
received in the arms of its comprehensive charity, the 
myriads who land upon our wharves; and done more 
hy its wondrous alchemy, than all other agencies com- 
bined, to transmute them into good citizens, and to 
homologate all creeds and parties and tongues in a 
harmonious brotherhood. It has redoubled its exer- 
tions to keep pace with the tide of emigration as it 
has rolled over the prairies, pierced the primeval 
forests of the West, and poured itself down the slopes 
of the llocky Mountains upon the fertile plains of 
Oregon and into the auriferous valleys of California. 
And, not satisfied with domestic conquests, though 
stretching from ocean to ocean, it has sent forth its 
peaceful cohorts to distant shores; and from Asia, 
from Africa, from the Isles of the Sea, ten thousand 
voices come back to proclaim their bloodless victories, 
and to assure us that the wilderness and the solitary 
place have been made glad for them, and the desert 
rejoices and blossoms as the rose. 

Now let the Union be dissolved, and how certainly 
will this vision pass away. For it is not possible that 
this event should occur, without involving religion in 
the general catastrophe. It is a common maxim that, 
in times of public distress or alarm, credit is the first 
thing to suffer. It is no less true that Religion sym- 
pathizes at such crises, not only with credit, but with 
every other element of prosperity. Christianity is not 
a thing by itself — a mere matter of Bible-reading and 
church-going, of Sundays and sacraments. It is in- 



THE UNION. 53 

terfused, as we have just seen, through all our rela- 
tions, comprehends all our employments, and exerts 
its prerogative over the whole field of human duty. 
The moment you touch the commerce or the hus- 
bandry of a country, you touch its Christianity. If 
you paralyze any branch of industry, weaken the 
popular confidence in the government, excite an ex- 
pectation of war, or do anything else to agitate the 
public mind, religion feels the effect of it. It requires 
no prophet, therefore, to foresee that, in the event of 
a disruption, the churches would share the common 
fortunes of the country. Amidst despondency and 
terror, dissensions and war, their strength would 
dwindle and their zeal decline. With diminished 
resources, the money now appropriated to the mainte- 
nance and diffusion of the Gospel, would be wanted 
to pay troops and purchase munitions of war; or, 
should an appeal to arms be averted, to meet the 
enormous taxes for civil and military purposes inci- 
dent to the new order of things, and the critical rela- 
tions among the several States and Federations. It 
is no extravagant supposition that, if the process of 
dissolution once begins, it will not finally stop until 
the Republic is chopped up into six or eight distinct 
Leagues, each one of which must have its own general 
government, with the usual symbols and implements 
of nationality, such as legislative and judicial tribu- 
nals, ambassadors, a navy, and, what will thou bo 
unavoidable, a cordon of camps and fortresses and ;i 
considerable standing army. The very transit from 



T>4 THE UNION. 

our present condition to a state like this, would be 
like the passage of a fleet through the Norwegian 
Maelstrom. It would extinguish hundreds of feeble 
churches and shatter the strongest ones. Instead of 
keeping pace with the spiritual wants of our nomadic 
population, which they are barely able to do when 
blessed with a redundant prosperity, the various de- 
nominations would find it difficult to sustain them- 
selves at home. Foreign Missionaries would be re- 
called, and fields restored to paganism which have 
been won from it at a great outlay of money and life, 
and which are now " white to the harvest." The cir- 
cumstances of the country would be as unpropitious 
to the culture of sound morals as they are now favor- 
able. Infidelity and atheism would run riot through 
the land, violence and crime would superabound, and 
we should deteriorate in all those high moral qualities 
which have hitherto attested the efficacy of our Chris- 
tianity, and secured for us the respect of the civilized 
world. 

And all this avalanche of evil is to be brought down 
upon us for the sake of Religion! We are to ex- 
change our present condition for alienation, insecurity, 
commercial prostration, the decay of our churches, 
and the bankruptcy of our great charities — for the 
sake 1 of religion ! We are to make the Bible a nullity, 
and the Sabbath a day of amusement, re-open all the 
sluices of immorality, and deluge the land with licen- 
tiousness and profanity — for the sake of religion! We 
arc to disband our schools and churches among the 



TJ1E UNION. 55 

heathen, and send back the multitudes now under 

Christian instruction, to worship in idol temples and 
sacrifice their children to devils, — for the sake of re- 
ligion ! 

We protest against this huge impiety. If fanatics 
and demagogues are resolved to destroy this Union, 
let them not seek to sanctify the parricidal crime by 
perpetrating it in the name of religion. Enough 
that Buddhism should crush its besotted devotees 
under the car of Juggernaut, in the name of religion ; 
that Mohammed should fertilize kingdoms with human 
blood, in the name of religion ; that a spurious Chris- 
tianity should keep its arsenals of chains and fagots, 
and slaughter whole tribes of unoffending peasants, 
in the name of religion. Let not Satan come hither 
also in the robes of an angel of light. Let not the 
august name of religion be invoked to hallow an 
enormity, which would not only shroud this land in 
mourning, but inflict upon religion itself the most irre- 
parable injury. Every consideration of virtue not 
only, but of decency, forbids that Christianity should 
be called upon to preside at an auto-da-fe of which it 
is itself to be the holocaust ; to consecrate a crime 
which would, for the time, arrest its own beneficent 
triumphs, give new energy to all the emissaries of evil, 
and be hailed with transport by those, and only those, 
who exult in the calamities of virtue and the victories 
of sin. 

Not to pursue this painful theme, it must be too 
apparent to require argument, that the dismember- 



56 THE UNION. 

ment of this Union would be one of the most appal- 
ling calamities which could befall the world. " Other 
misfortunes (I use the words of the great Statesman of 
Massachusetts) may be borne or their effects overcome. 
If disastrous war should sweep our commerce from the 
ocean, another generation may renew it; if it exhaust 
our treasury, future industry may replenish it ; if it 
desolate and lay waste our fields, still under a new 
cultivation they will grow green again and ripen to 
future harvests. It were but a trifle even if the 
walls of the Capitol were to crumble, if its lofty- 
pillars should fall, and its gorgeous decorations be all 
covered by the dust of the valley. All these might 
be rebuilt. But who shall reconstruct the fabric of 
demolished Government? Who shall rear again the 
well-proportioned columns of Constitutional liberty? 
Who shall frame together the skilful architecture 
which unites national sovereignty with State rights, 
individual security, and public prosperity 1 No, if these 
columns fall, they will not be raised again. Like the 
Coliseum and the Parthenon, they will be destined to 
a mournful, a melancholy immortality. Bitterer tears, 
however, will flow over them than were ever shed 
over the monuments of Roman or Grecian art; for 
they will be the remnants of a more glorious edifice 
than Greece or Rome ever saw. — the edifice of Con- 
stitutional American Liberty."* But why slwuld they 
fall ! What is it that now threatens to overwhelm 

Mr. Webster's Speech at the celebration of Washington's Birth-day, 
in Washington, 1832. 



THE UNION. in 

this Government in irretrievable ruin I lias it become 
so enervated by luxury as to sink into inanition 1 Are 
we falling to pieces through the extraordinary and in- 
tractable expansion of our territory I Is there a vic- 
torious army at our gates? Are we ground down 
with oppressive laws for which there is no remedy but 
in a dissolution % No : none of these. But Congress, 
in the exercise of a power never before called in 
question, has admitted a State into the Union which 
refused to tolerate involuntary servitude ; and in obe- 
dience to an imperative requisition of the Constitu- 
tion, has passed a law for the reclamation of fugitive 
slaves ! These are the grounds on which it is pro- 
posed to destroy this Government. For these reasons 
we are called upon, in the midst of peace, plenty, and 
prosperity, to exchange the best Government the 
world has ever seen — the most affluent blessings, the 
most glorious reminiscences, and the most brilliant 
prospects a nation ever enjoyed — for dismemberment, 
anarchy, and carnage. Surely, if the establishment 
of this Union by the voluntary consent of the people 
was, as Mr. Hamilton declared, a " prodigy," its volun- 
tary destruction by that same people or their degene- 
rate descendants, for causes like these and after sixty 
years' experience of its benefits, would be a far greater 
prodigy. The turpitude of such a crime has nothing 
in history to illustrate it, Language was not made to 
define it. The generation which perpetrates it, will 
cover themselves with an infamy as iU>c\) as the abyss 
into which they will have plunged their country. 



58 THE UNION. 

And the patriots of all coming generations will exe- 
crate the memories of the men, who betrayed the 
priceless heritage of Constitutional Liberty which was 
purchased with the blood of their fathers, and placed 
in their hands as trustees for mankind. 

Let it be our aim to do what we can to avert so 
fearful a catastrophe. Let us cultivate a spirit of 
conciliation towards all portions of the Confederacy. 
Let us sustain the majesty of the law. Let us invoke 
the blessing of Heaven upon our rulers. Let us, above 
all, be instant and earnest in commending our beloved 
country to the care of that benignant Providence, who 
has brought us through so many dangers, and crowned 
us with such unexampled prosperity. 



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